What Next For Minelab?

[phrunt]

56 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

MMMMmmmm.... You wait a further 12 months & there will be less gold for you to find. Early bird gets the worm. One thing for sure is that ML honour their warranties & your mates who get the new detector straight off the bat will get the gold you would have most likely shared in with them. Food for thought.

D4G

Waiting doesn't work anyway, I waited over 12 months for the GPX 6000, still got a dud 🙂

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

2 hours ago, Aureous said:

 

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I have little interest in anything other than a detector that gets a solid 20% more depth than what we have now, and that's not going to happen.

Don't be so sure Steve.... from what I hear, this isn't so far from reality, 

 

Hopefully the 20% more depth is on all sizes and shapes of gold and not just a chart claiming better depth. I would still like to see the actual Star Chart and GPZ 40% deeper testing site details on how they came to these conclusions.

I am also worried that the next release will have proprietary coil options that do not cover all gold types or sizes until you upgrade to the flagship version, even the 7000 never allowed us to buy any approved coils under 12”.
 

In the end, I guess Minelab still controls the market and I’ll just have to conform and buy whatever performance improvements help me be able to find more targets.

[GR Guy]

Whatever happens when you look at the gold price it should be quicker to pay off a new machine for an experienced prospector. Based on Aussie gold price it was around $1300 an ounce when the 5000 came out, $1500 for the zed, $2300 for the 6000 and now sitting at $3600 with a bullet. Just have to spend the time on the ground and get out and enjoy the beautiful countryside.

[Steve Herschbach]

1 hour ago, RONS DETECTORS MINELAB said:

I would still like to see the actual Star Chart and GPZ 40% deeper testing site details on how they came to these conclusions.

It's been available since day one - read the three posts I made here:

 

[dig4gold]

On 4/29/2024 at 11:01 AM, phrunt said:

Waiting doesn't work anyway, I waited over 12 months for the GPX 6000, still got a dud 🙂

Sad you got a dud & also lost 12 months of critical detecting time. Especially as your friend got one quite early as we both got one about the same time as we were communicating a bit at that time. He got 12 months on you & most likely on the ground you have been doing as well. That is my point with the "early bird gets the worm" comment in my earlier post. Also that ML honour their warranties so any issues they will sort out. From memory you were so frustrated with your dud out of the box that you bashed it & it came to life. Whether that was good or bad & that maybe you should have sent it back under warranty, you will never know. I guess by going public that you bashed it would void your warranty anyway.

Not everybody in detecting world is evil or has evil intent. That is most likely not the right way to word it but I am referring to X coils (the non evil party) & again those that went down that path, & obviously as it turned out against Minelabs wishes & many others, the early bird again got the worm. I am one that didn't go down that path but most definitely see its benefits. Despite all the fallout from that saga if it wasn't for X coils pushing minelabs hand we wouldn't have the NF Z search coils that so many go on about being better than the ML coils for the 7000.  Any innervation, no matter who or where it comes from, has to benefit us detector/coil users. I think we are now all up to speed on Minelabs business model of mining the miners & ham stringing their detector/coil combinations in regards to aftermarket coils that don't get their approval.... for obvious financial reasons to them & their detector sales. Competition is good & are other manufacturers now going to get a good slice of the pie or is it too late with gold getting harder to find by the day. Despite its high price at the moment, the glory days are over & we are just struggling along on the vapour of an oily rag.

D4G 

 

 

[phrunt]

50 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

That is my point with the "early bird gets the worm" comment in my earlier post. Also that ML honour their warranties so any issues they will sort out. From memory you were so frustrated with your dud out of the box that you bashed it & it came to life. Whether that was good or bad & that maybe you should have sent it back under warranty, you will never know. I guess by going public that you bashed it would void your warranty anyway.

Yes, it turns out some GPX 6000's had battery terminals that were stuck inside the detector from the factory, not popping out and dealers were dealing with that themselves fixing it when they had returns because of it as you could usually pop them out with a toothpick or something, although in my case I'm not overly sure as it would turn on and just error with an ! mark right out of the box so it was getting power, and yes, I threw it to the ground in annoyance of a DOA and it kicked in and worked after a power cycle so something was possibly loose or a poor connection somewhere, it did do the error a few more times over the coming days and my dealer was arranging to ship me a replacement but I told him it was working now so not to worry as all the costs involved to him for that but I'd lost a lot of confidence in it at that point.   There were no issues with getting it swapped under warranty, you don't lose warranty for physical damage if there is no damage 🙂    I did read other reports of the connection between the PCB's not being ideal on some detectors, perhaps mine had that problem.

I guess the biggest issue being an early bird are the costs associated with shipping it back to Minelab for repair if it is a dud, my 6000 wasn't too expensive to ship back I think something like $15 in NZD when I had to and insurance is included here in the shipping price at no extra charge but I believe in the US you have to buy insurance for the package which is quite expensive so shipping theirs back was a costly exercise.  My return process was quick and easy, but that's the benefit of being in a small country, overnight shipping, fixed the same day it arrived and shipped back the next day overnight, same with when my coil went back, quick process.  I can't complain about their warranty service, the NZ service agent is top notch, I'd give them an excellent review.

The other problem with the 6000 was as we know the EMI fix took them over a year to even acknowledge, if they were more honest about it perhaps it wouldn't have spiralled into such a big deal, they could have caught it earlier on and saved themselves a lot of money in repairs too but they chose to believe it was not many detectors and very rare, to this day their notice still says that, yet I've not noticed anyone getting it done that didn't notice some improvement, even the sceptical.  I got mine and didn't stop complaining about it until they acknowledged the problem and it was fixed and I'm sure glad they fixed it, such an improvement.

Some old threads on it, here and here, but there are plenty more, once the snowball of complaints started, they had little choice but to acknowledge and fix it.

I'm generally an early bird, my delay with the 6000 purchase wasn't because I wanted to wait for bugs to be ironed out, it was more I was deciding if I'd even benefit from having one with my GPZ and selection of coils for it.  I didn't want to spend the money if it wasn't worth spending the money on.  I still to this day don't really think I benefit much from having it and prefer using the GPZ but that's just me.

[Gerry in Idaho]

48 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

Sad you got a dud & also lost 12 months of critical detecting time. Especially as your friend got one quite early as we both got one about the same time as we were communicating a bit at that time. He got 12 months on you & most likely on the ground you have been doing as well. That is my point with the "early bird gets the worm" comment in my earlier post. Also that ML honour their warranties so any issues they will sort out. From memory you were so frustrated with your dud out of the box that you bashed it & it came to life. Whether that was good or bad & that maybe you should have sent it back under warranty, you will never know. I guess by going public that you bashed it would void your warranty anyway.

I have no issues with Simon and many others showing frustration with the GPX-6000, Minelab earned it.

Why did not the original Field Testers notify Minelab of the issues?  Maybe they did and Minelab turned a cheek, we will never know.

This I know for a fact.  I complained about the issues to Minelab USA and was lied to.  I also sent an email and to this day have yet to get a reply.  Not sure if the folks at Minelab USA has any say anymore, but they did back in the 90's when I first started promoting Minelab.

Now you might call me a sour Minelab Dealer, but at the same time, I promote the heck out of their detectors and show more pics of gold success than most other dealers who sell the same product.  I love their technologies and performances.  I also appreciate the 3 year warranty as for many years it was only 2 yrs.  I don't appreciate their strategies of price points.  I say this as I have been one trying to sell their detectors for near 30 yrs.  Why not offer the same detectors at 1/2 the price (still more than the competition) and sell twice as many.  Then come out with new versions every 3 to 4 yrs (like they did back in the early days) instead of waiting 9 years (based on GPZ-7000).

Back to the next new big detector from Minelab.  It will happen and probably as Lunk mentioned (during the May 2025 Worldwide Conference.  What do I hope for?  A detector with GPZ-7000 depth on solid gold, with the lighter coils, size and ergonomics of a GPX-6000 and also have Sensitivity of specimen gold, Discrimination and Fine Tuning that the Axiom has and then price this package at $4999 US.  I would think gold could be around $2500 US an oz and we could sell twice as many detectors.

Only time will tell.

 

[dig4gold]

Thank you Gerry & Phrunt. While the 6000 has been a shambles & a frustration for many, I somehow have not had issues with mine. Touch wood. We do know who the tester were Gerry. Maybe they were just not aware of the issues at that time or ML did ignore them. JP did promote it as being highly strung & on the edge due to the nature of the beast & its heightened sensitivity & jittery nature therefore etc etc.

I am not a Minelab basher as such as I have loved all my ML machines. I just don't like their business model antics in controlling their market share/domination & take my hat off to the likes of X coils who developed a work around for the chip on the 7000 & have obviously made a heap of very good coils that has called ML out on their say so that a 10" coil wasn't physically possible to make with the amount of wire winding required in the small space of a 10" coil. Despite them saying they would make a 10" coil.  X coils pumped out not only a 10" but also an 8" coil & many more. The CC's being from what I have seen a huge hit. Left egg on ML's face & has basically called them out as liars. 

@Phrunt.  I find it interesting that the bit of gold you did find while detecting with Mitchel was found with the 6000 & an aftermarket coil despite your favoritism being with the 7000 & 8" X coil that found you nothing.  While you showed that video of your patch clean up at the area you took Mitchel too with the 7000 & 8" X coil. Who is to say that the 6000 wouldn't have found those with the 10x5 Goldhawk coil in among those thyme bushes? 

I have to admit that the 15" CC seems very impressive.

D4G

 

 

[phrunt]

39 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

@Phrunt.  I find it interesting that the bit of gold you did find while detecting with Mitchel was found with the 6000 & an aftermarket coil despite your favoritism being with the 7000 & 8" X coil that found you nothing.  While you showed that video of your patch clean up at the area you took Mitchel too with the 7000 & 8" X coil. Who is to say that the 6000 wouldn't have found those with the 10x5 Goldhawk coil in among those thyme bushes? 

The F19 VLF I just got would have found that piece with ease and I say so in the initial post, it was nothing to do with the detector, as if often the case, just like when I found a couple of bits with the Algoforce in the same area a few weeks earlier, nothing to do with the detector, just the coil being in the right place.   

The 6000 likely would have found most if not all the gold I found in the thyme bushes, ,they're both very good detectors, and on this sort of gold they're very competitive with each other although I do still favour the 8" on the GPZ over the Coiltek 10x5" on the GPX 6000 on this small gold as if golds a bit deeper I have more confidence the GPZ will find it and the 6000 may not (small coil vs small coil), I might be wrong and don't have enough experience finding thousands of bits of gold but I find the GPZ tends to find deeper bits than the 6000.  I'm not so sure the 6000 would have found all the gold the 15" CC found on that patch, but it likely would have found some bits the 15" CC missed.  If I ever find another patch similar, I'd use both detectors on it with a few different coils for the best results and that's why for now at least I'll keep the 6000 even though it's not my favourite detector.

What I did notice that day was the Equinox I had with me would have missed a lot of the gold I was finding with the 8", and of course the 15" CC   I was able to do a lot of side-by-side testing that day between them, and in the video I demonstrate the Equinox not picking up one of the bits until much closer to it so that day helped move me off wanting to use VLF's so much as prior I was a big fan of using the VLF's and often used one instead of my GPZ much to JW's surprise, he never did understand me rocking up with my Nox instead of my GPZ 🙂 Looked at me in shock horror sometimes when I appeared with a VLF. 😀

Something else that is fact, I'd missed that 4.1 gram bit I showed the recovery video of with the 8" on the GPZ with other combinations, , it's a slim little bit of soil between two dug out areas. yet the 8" got it, even though it was quite deep, deeper than my scoop.

[Norvic]

JP pegged it with the 6K, jittery, highly strung etc. exactly how I found it, regardless, it proved to be just like a SDC on steroids. I have found it to be a very productive detector, a brilliant patch finder in my country right out of the box. I did have its 11" coil turn spastic but that was after a few years beating it up against rocks a problem all coils have/will have, nah maybe I was lucky just like the testers, but I look forward to MLs next, but don`t leave it too long to introduce ML or you`ll have to shout me a walking stick.😉